CONTENTS OF CHAPTER XXXII
Indispensable need for the scientific investigation of sexual problems — Insignificance and ludicrous character of the objections made to such investigation — The diffusion of sexual perversities was just as extensive before their scientific study was first undertaken — de Sade’s system of psychopathia sexualis — Recent additions to the scientific literature of the subject — Works upon homosexuality — Upon erotic symbolism — General investigations regarding the sexual impulse — General works upon the sexual problem — Periodical literature relating to the sexual life.
CHAPTER XXXII
Truth is always a good thing, even truth regarding the sexual life. Neither prudery nor moral hypocrisy can controvert this proposition. He who recognizes the immense importance of sexuality in relationship to civilization at large—he who, like the author of the present work, has been occupied for many years in the study of the subject from the points of view of medicine, anthropology, ethnology, literature, and the history of civilization—is not only entitled, but will also consider it his duty, to publish his investigations, to make publicly known his views and his opinions, and to take a definite and clear position in relation to the burning questions of the day in this province of thought.
Such men as Ploss-Bartels, who, in their celebrated and purely scientific work, “Woman in Natural History and Folklore,” could not avoid collecting numerous piquant and even obscene details, and who, for example, have described in a special chapter the various postures assumed during sexual intercourse; such a man as von Krafft-Ebing, whose “Psychopathia Sexualis”[808] contains a number of detailed autobiographies and clinical histories of sexually perverse individuals—such men as these have been blamed because their books have been diffused in numerous editions, extending to many thousands of copies, and because these books have been read more by laymen than by medical men. Apart from the fact that in earlier times much more dangerous books—such, for example, as the works of Virey, Flittner, G. F. Most, and Rozier, characterized by a lascivious style, or such a book as the dictionary “Eros”—obtained the widest possible circulation; apart, also from the fact that even in works conceived and executed in a strictly scientific spirit—such as the numerous monographs of Martin Schurig, or the work of Frenzel (belonging to the nineteenth century) concerning impotence (see, for example, Frenzel, op. cit., pp. 155, 156, 161)—obscene passages and incredibly depraved stories occur; and apart, finally, from the incredible mass of pornographic writings, in comparison with which the scientific literature of the sexual life is almost infinitesimally small—putting on one side all these considerations, it is merely necessary to refer to the established fact that all possible sexual perversities were known to exist before the publication of von Krafft-Ebing’s “Psychopathia Sexualis,” and that they made their appearance spontaneously at all times and in all places. In the eighteenth century the Marquis de Sade, in his romance “The One Hundred and Twenty Days of Sodom,” was able to found a system of psychopathia sexualis which not only contained all the perverse types described by von Krafft-Ebing, but was even more varied in its contents, and exhibited yet more numerous categories of sexual anomalies than the book of the Viennese alienist.[809] This work is a document of enormous importance to civilization,[810] because it provides a complete refutation to the fable of modern degeneration, and because it gives us a proof that quite shortly before the powerful upheaval of the French nation and the heroic campaigns of the Napoleonic epoch, in this nation there were diffused the most frightful perversities, regarding the reality of which there can, according to recent experience, be no doubt whatever.
Scientific authorship—even popular scientific works[811]—dealing with the province of the sexual life cannot therefore be made responsible, in any respect, for the diffusion of sexual perversities. The founder of modern sexual science, A. von Schrenck-Notzing,[812] insisted on this fact; and recently it has been once more emphasized by S. Freud, who has probably gone further than any other writer in biologico-physiological derivation of sexual perversions.
Havelock Ellis’s “Analysis of the Sexual Impulse” (vol. iii. of this writer’s “Studies in the Psychology of Sex,” published by the F. A. Davis Co., Philadelphia)—a book in which we find an admirable analysis of the development and variations of the sexual impulse, including an account of sadism and masochism, enriched by numerous examples—has recently appeared in a German translation (Würzburg, 1903). The translator, Dr. H. Kurella, in his preface to this work, says (pp. ix, x), in my opinion with perfect justice:
“Daily experience among my patients suffering from nervous diseases—patients who were for the most part women and girls—has shown me how extremely important is enlightenment regarding the sexual life for women suffering from nervous disorders. For this reason, I hope the book will have the widest possible circulation among the mothers of daughters about to grow up. If they will employ in a proper manner the knowledge which they will be able to obtain from its contents, in this way an immeasurable quantity of sorrow and misery can be prevented. This use of its teaching will, by itself, suffice to compensate the author and the translator for the scruples they must always feel in giving to the world a book which is likely to be valued by some simply as providing prurient reading matter, and which by such persons will perhaps be circulated for this purpose—a fate to which every book dealing with erotic subjects is exposed, however earnest its style and tendency may be.”